BigMarley’s Tiers Breakdown – DraftKings
Last year I won a trip out to the Live Final for DraftKings to compete in the PickEm’ (Tiers) Championship. I won my ticket to that with a $2 entry and I ended up winning $5,000 at the Live Final. This year, I am going to share all my Tiers secrets with the DFS ARMY members and hopefully some of you guys can get an awesome experience like that this year.
The first thing I want to say about Tiers is that you don’t necessarily want to make a lineup going for the most points you can score. Instead, think of what the popular plays will be and try to be different by still making good picks. With Tiers, there is no salary, so people flock to the “best” plays. That makes it easier to know which players will be chalky. If you look at projections for each tier, the highest projected player will usually be the most owned guy in that tier. However, they don’t always score the most. Fading the chalk players is the way to go in GPPs and this format makes it easier for you to figure out who those chalk players will be.
With that said, let’s dig into the week 3 Tiers slate:
T1- Patrick Mahomes is your clear chalk in this slate. I can’t say it’s bad chalk, so if you want to go all in on Mahomes here in T1, I think that is ok. You just have to be sure to separate yourself from the field in other tiers. I expect Mahomes to be owned by close to half the field so I am going to fade the tier 1 chalk, personally. I think Kirk Cousins is a solid play here as well, and if you are loading up on Latavius Murray on the main slate then maybe you’d want to get some hedge in here with Cousins. I am going to go all-in on Drew Brees in this tier myself. This is my favorite game of the week and I have a hard time seeing Brees not being one of the top guys on this tier. I think that we will have a shootout in ATL and with Mark Ingram still suspended, this offense runs through Drew Brees and the passing game. I am going to throw him in all 20 of my LUs and hope he can contend with Mahomes for the top spot. Brees is leading the league with an 81.3% completion percentage and he has eight 20+ yard completions in the first two weeks.
T2- I just mentioned my favorite game of the week in the last paragraph, and we have the other QB from that game in tier 2. Matt Ryan is my favorite play from this tier and I might load up all 20 of my LUs on this game and go 100% Brees/Ryan. I do think the ownership on this tier will be much more spread out. I don’t have a problem with anyone from this tier, so if you like guys more than Ryan than go with your gut and take them. The other plays from this tier that I would consider are Cam Newton, Deshaun Watson, and Philip Rivers. If you like any of these guys more than Ryan I have no issue going there instead. The guy I like the least in this tier is Russell Wilson.
T3- Since I will have 100% Brees in my LUs, this is an easy tier for me. Half of my LUs will have Michael Thomas and the other half will have Alvin Kamara. Those two guys are by far Brees’ favorite targets and they should both get over 10 targets this week. If I was making just 1 LU, I would prefer Kamara over Thomas stacked with Brees. The other top two plays on this tier are Todd Gurley and Tyreek Hill. If I wasn’t going 100% Brees then both these guys would make my list. Both have slate breaking potential and if you are not using Brees, those are the two guys I would prefer over the Saints guys.
T4- If you have listened to me at all this year or last, you know what my pick is for this tier. I am #TeamJulio so this is another all-in spot for me. I am biased though. But it also makes sense for me if I am all in on Brees/Thomas or Brees/Kamara stacks to just bring it back with Julio. So, that is what I will be doing. This is a very tough tier though and there are no bad plays on this tier. I have no issues with any player from this tier, so my advice would be to go with the guy you like the most, or try to get contrarian and maybe go with David Johnson since he will be by far the lowest owned guy in T4.
T5- This is a tough tier and I don’t think anybody really stands above the others. Dalvin Cook is OUT this week, so we can scratch him off at least. Also, if you are following my advice so far through the first 4 tiers, then we will have very similar LUs. So, this is the tier I am going to give no personal advice on since I don’t particularly love any guy. Instead, I will direct you to the Domination Station on DFS ARMY. If you haven’t checked it out yet, we have a Tiers format on the DS and you can always go there for our projections or to optimize your LUs. This is what we have on the DS for T5 this week:
T6- We have another tough tier in T6. I am going to attack this tier a little differently. I am fading Kareem Hunt on the main slate this week because I think he might be too chalky for me over there. But, I am nervous about that fade. So, this is where I am going to get my Hunt exposure. I won’t go all-in on him here, but I do want him in 5-10 of my LUs. The DS has him as the highest projected guy in this tier as well. I also like Chris Thompson a lot here. I think he is the best player on the Redskins and I think he has a shot at scoring over 20 DK points against anybody. The game script says they should be playing from behind against GB so that should lead to more work for Thompson. However, he is the lowest projected on the DS… I also like Tevin Coleman and Giovani Bernard a good bit in this tier as well since they will be the lead backs for their teams this week. I don’t like using TE’s over stud RBs and WRs though so I wouldn’t be touching Travis Kelce or Zach Ertz here, personally.
T7- This is an easy one for me. Will Fuller V and Emmanuel Sanders are my favorites from this tier by a long shot. I would suggest you chose one of these two guys and just eat the chalk here. I will probably go 50/50 on these two. If you don’t want to eat the chalk here, then I like Nelson Agholor as the #3. The Eagles are banged up and he should see extra work because of it. I just think Fuller and Sanders are too good to pass on here. Be different elsewhere would be my advice.
T8 – I don’t love anybody from this tier but the only guy that made my player pool sheet this week is Randall Cobb. So, he is my preferred play. I will not go 100% Cobb though. Kenny Stills has the highest ceiling on this tier, IMO. I want some exposure to Stills and he is probably the best play in T8 for GPPs because of that ceiling. I also like Allen Robinson II in this tier and he almost made my player pool sheet this week. Since he didn’t make that pool, I do want Tiers exposure to him. Last week he saw 14 targets which is over 41% of Mitchell Trubisky’s total pass attempts. He is clearly the lead guy in Chicago and I think he is a solid play in this tier against a struggling Cardinals.
Good luck to everyone in the DFS ARMY for week 3! I hope to see some more huge winning screenshots this week and if I don’t win the big Tiers GPP, I hope one of you do.
If you have any questions you can hit me up in my Slack channel at #Big-Marley-NFL-MMA